Today we have an exclusive interview with the gang at Super7. As you will recall, last year at this time, Super7 had already announced their ReAction line of retro figures based on the original Kenner sculpts for the never released “Alien” line of action figures. Then they cracked the internet in half when they announced they would have two SDCC exclusive “Alien” items at the con: the sales sample 2-pack and the “early bird” kit to preorder the first wave of figures. If you were one of the folks lucky enough to snag either of those two items on preview night then consider yourself patient and blessed, because there were a LOT of disappointed Alien fans that weekend who missed out on the hottest collectibles of SDCC 2013.

Tomorrow Super7 will announce their line up of SDCC 2014 exclusives and it’s a bigger, more ambitious list than last year, and once again it will make you want to be sure that Super7 is your first stop at the con! Super7 has been gracious enough to allow AFi reveal one of their exclusives as well as doing an exclusive interview with us about the item.

To get the conversation started lets first tell you what the item is:

Super7 x Funko: AlienDeep Space Mystery ReAction Figures
From Deep Space comes a mysterious Alien Egg containing an unknown life form! Only by looking inside the hideously detailed egg can you find out what ReAction Figure lurks inside. Doubling as a blind box, each Alien egg contains an extremely limited, secret ReAction Figure. Hidden in these eggs are new sculpts and colors never before seen in the Alien universe. Once opened, the egg doubles as an action figure stand featuring a foot-peg to pose your ReAction Figure standing in the terrifying open mouth of the Alien Deep Space Egg! In space no one can hear you scream… Limited to four eggs per person for the entirety of the show. $25 ea.

Mystery figures, indeed! Let’s talk to Super7 and see if we can pry some more information out of them about this:

Action Figure insider:Is there a round number about how many figures/variants for people to look for/buy/trade for to get a complete set?

Super7:We really want this to be a fun experience for everyone. We want to bring back some of the fun and experience of SDCC, and a little less about the checklist chase that so many people seem to follow, so we are not saying what is hiding in the eggs in any real capacity. Once people at SDCC start opening the eggs they will figure out how many figures and colors there are by talking to their friends or other collectors . To help make it a bit more fun, we are going to have a “Deep Space Rescue” on Friday night at 6pm, so if you did not get a figure you wanted, or were hoping to trade a double, everyone can come to the booth at Friday at 6pm and swap figures with other attendees, make new friends, and generally have some fun collecting toys. Remember when all of this was supposed to be fun?

AFi:In the write up it mentions not just repainted figures, but also new sculpts… will those sculpts be available later in some other form?

Super7:The new sculpts will eventually be released. We have plans and designs, but it will be a little while before they hit the shelves, we are still finishing up most of the ReAction figures we announced at NYTF, so we are quite a ways away.

AFi:When you say “new sculpts” do you mean any new characters that did not appear in wave 1?

Super7: I don’t want to give it away but they are new ReAction Figures that were not available in wave1.

AFi:The only repaint/variant we have seen in the line so far is the smoky translucent Big Chap. Will the repaints in this wave be along those lines? Or will they be something wilder?

Super7:Actually, if you bought the “NYTF 1979 Prototype Set” you got the unpainted blue Alien and Kane, but aside from that the smoke translucent is the only other variant made so far. The only hint I will give is that it is named “Deep Space” and you know, in space (and SDCC) no one can hear you scream!

AFi:Will there be any super rare variants or were they all produced in equal quantities?

Super7:Now, where is the sport in that?

AFi:Can you talk about how the stand works? Is it half the egg so they are standing on a ridge?

Super7:The egg is huge actually, it is 6″ tall, and it is super thick plastic. It is not an easter egg by any means. On the top of the egg, where the egg “flaps” fold out, inside the recess of the egg is a foot peg. You can put the egg back together, and the figure stands inside the top of the egg like it is coming out of the figure. You will wan to keep and display the egg, not hide it in a box in your closet.

AFi:With Super7’s creation of the ReAction brand the thinking behind every decision was always “How would Kenner have done this?” Since Kenner never did any blind bagged figures like this has that credo changed when approaching the ReAction line?

Super7:I think we are guided by what has happened in the past, but we have also been making our own toys for 13 years now. In the end, we want to make it fun and exciting and try to do things that have not been done in the action figure world yet. The Salesman Sample set from last year had not really been done, and then tweaking the early bird kit was a great retro tribute that really kicked the Alien line off in a great “what would have happened in 1979” way.

For this year, we knew there were going to be a lot of people coming to SDCC asking what our early bird kit and sample toys were for this year, and we really wanted to make sure we did something new and different to make this year as fun as last year was. The idea of the blind bagged egg was to just make it a really fun experience, and contained to SDCC. I think if you have made the thousand mile trip to see us at SDCC, you should be able to do something you can’t do at home. In a lot of ways, I think the SDCC exclusive chase often overlooks the fact that you are there to have fun, so we tried to make it that you came to our booth and could talk about Lili Ledy figures and toe dents on the blue Snaggletooth while picking up some really cool ReAction Figures. That is what the “Deep Space rescue” party on Friday at 6pm is all about. Getting back to collecting and having fun and talking to other collectors. Come to our booth and nerd out with us.

AFi:Last year the ReAction Alien salesmen sample 2-pack was the hottest exclusive of the convention and sold out within hours of preview night opening. Will there be a greater quantity of these? Will you limit quantities so there are some each day for people that might not be coming to every day of the show? Will all the exclusives be on-hand so there won’t be a need to gather addresses and such?

Super7:Last year we were obviously completely unprepared for the response the Prototype 2-pack received. We went to SDCC thinking that most action figure collectors collect highly detailed, highly articulated action figures. We were coming down with crude likeness, retro, unpainted blue figures at that make references to mail away figures and prototype samples. It was obscure references across the board. We thought we would have enough to last us to Saturday, obviously that was not the case.

This year we made more figures as a whole for the Deep Space series, but we still want to make sure that they sell out at SDCC. That most companies make production runs big enough that they have enough to sell after SDCC for months on end confuses me. I want to make enough that if you came to SDCC you can get one, but not so much that they are all sitting on eBay for months after the fact. We were lucky last year, and almost none made it to the secondary market. The people that wanted them came to the booth and kept them for themselves as fans and collectors, which is great. We were not on the radar of the professional flippers last year. We know that this year there will be plenty of people coming to the booth only to flip the items, which we will try and keep to a minimum. To that regard, I am sure we will see much more of our stuff on eBay this year than last year, but I still expect it to be sold out by Saturday and disappear from eBay fairly quickly. Hopefully most of the collectors will keep their figures, that is why we made them.

AFi:Will there be any sort of give away at the booth like the Alien stand last year? Any chance of reproducing more of those stands for fans and ay expansion of the line?

Super7:No giveaways right now, as I think it will be pretty busy for us this year. We will be making figure stands soon, and we are actively working on expansion of both the Alien line (thus the new sculpts) as well as ReAction Figures as a whole.

Daniel “Julius Marx” Pickett has been around toys his whole life. The first line he ever collected was Mego’s World’s Greatest Super Heroes line back in the 70s. He has been surrounded by collectables ever since.
In 1999 he was confounded by a lack of information and news about some of his favorite toy lines he was collecting. Since he couldn’t find the information he decided to pursue it himself thinking other people might also be interested in the same news. He started writing a weekly column on the toy industry and action figure for a toy news site and in a years time he tripled the sites daily traffic with his updates, reviews and product features.
He built relationships with every major toy manufacturer and many sculptors, painters and mold makers. He grew his hobby into a world wide expertise that the industry has embraced.
In 2004 he teamed up with his toy buddy Jason “ToyOtter” Geyer and they created their own website www.ActionFigureInsider.com.
Daniel has been quoted in both industry and mass media press outlets. Over the years Daniel and AFi have been sought out as experts in the field. Daniel was regularly featured on “Attack of the Show” on the G4 network as the primary contributor to their “Mint On Card” segment, and our front page has been linked to from USA Today’s
“Pop Candy” Blog twice. Daniel’s content has also been featured on MSNBC.com,
Wired.com, Fark.com, Boing-Boing, Gizmodo.com, Ain’t It Cool News, the Official
Star Wars blog, Geekologie, G4, CNet and Toy Fare magazine, among many
others. He has consulted on toy lines, books, documentaries and TV shows.
But all of that really just sounds snooty and “tootin’ his own horn” – the long and short of it is that Daniel loves toys and he LOVES talking about them.

– We really want this to be a fun experience for everyone.
– We want to bring back some of the fun and experience of SDCC…
– To help make it a bit more fun…
– …have some fun collecting toys.
– Remember when all of this was supposed to be fun?
– In the end, we want to make it fun…
– …to make this year as fun as last year was.
– The idea of the blind bagged egg was to just make it a really fun experience,
– Getting back to collecting and having fun…
– …the SDCC exclusive chase often overlooks the fact that you are there to have fun…

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

So all the people that have been onboard since the start and just want to have a complete collection, but can’t make it to SDCC because it sold out in 90 minutes, thanks but no reward for your loyalty? I guess Super 7 knows how to make good stuff, but doesn’t know what it’s like to be a completist collector.

I don’t remember there being any hard to get exclusives in the 70’s. Even the Star Wars Cantina set could easily be ordered through a Sears catalog everyone got. It actually WAS fun then, because everyone could get everything, there were no scalpers or super limited exclusives. Knowing you’ll never have them all kind of kills it for me.

I have to echo the sentiment above. Living in the UK, its not that easy to pop across to SDCC even if I wanted to, and I’ve already supported this line as best I can – even if it means shelling out a small fortune to buy all of wave 1 as imports. Not to mention the money I’ve put down pre-ordering the rest of the retro ReAction line.

Its kind of disheartening that even if I was prepared to pay through the nose on eBay I’m unlikely to get most of these items. Ok, I can live with some of the figures being available later (hopefully we get the rest of the Nostromo crew!). And I probably dont need simple repaints of spacesuits, head swaps or other minor variations.

But I really hope the egg chamber playset makes it out for general release. The only people who are going to be happy about these are the people who manage to hoover up a fortune on the secondary market. I understand the desire to do something to make this event special, but between this and the Firefly exclusives it feels like the majority of people who’ve pledged their support to these figures are getting royally hosed.

What a bunch of dense idiots! What made the 1979 and 80s era so fun was the “collect them all!” Mantra. This kind of nonsense is killing my enthusiasm for their toys. Its sad that Super7 is too stupid to “understand” why other companies makeenough to sell after the show. They badmouth “professional flippers” but this whole scheme of theirs is playing right into the flippers hands! Damn, Super7, I thought you guys were cool, but you’re woefully out of touch with what your fanbase really wants! I want to “collect them all”, you jerks are making that nearly impossible. I might as well quit now.

Exactly! After seeing the egg chamber playset my wife and I popped Alien into the ole DVD player and had a ball. Then come to find out it is an exclusive?!?!?! That is ridiculous. Make it available to the public!

I agree with the other posts…. I grew up in the 70’s, saw ALIEN in the theatre as a kid, and always wanted the Kenner Alien doll (but never got it). I would absolutely love to dive into this line, but the exclusivity has prevented me from doing so. I don’t like to reward scalpers with huge mark-ups on ebay. If they were to make these available for online purchase I’d buy every single thing offered. Oh well…..

I was soooo excited when the Alien figures first came out. Then the announcement of all the new lines had me ecstatic. Now it turns out I wont be able to get these?!?!? I have pretty much sworn off collecting figures anymore, and this is the kind of stuff that has made me stop after decades of collecting them all. Collecting in the 70s and 80s and 90s was fun because you could save your money and get what you wanted as easy as going into a store. These days prices are ridiculous (I love the Jumbo SW figures and would collect them all if they were reasonably priced, instead I had 2 and probably wont buy more even though I want them all), and first had availability (straight from the store shelf or directly from the figures maker) is a thing of the past. I had hopes for these lines, but those hopes are gone now. It’s only fun if anyone that wants to do it, can do it.